AS women toast their day today, it would be pleasing if they used their powerful voice to highlight corrupt practices that appear to be an everyday phenomenon at the grassroots level.
Corrupt behaviour is wrong, so everyone agrees, because the vice is often integrated in the essential aspects of the economic, social and political system.
This is why corruption poses a danger to development as it threatens to sap the nation of economic resources. As a result all people desire to have it wiped off the face of society.
When people talk of corruption in Zambia, like many other countries, eyes are often focused on the technocrats and, most importantly, political decision-makers.
Corruption emanating from especially the latter – this powerful group of people – is called political corruption and mainly occurs when the laws and regulations are abused, side-stepped, ignored, or even tailored by those in high offices to fit their interests.
This is where such things as Government contracts are illegitimately given to private individuals, usually not on merit but precisely because of the connections they have with those awarding them as they try to amass wealth for themselves.
One of the end results, as often stated in the Auditor-General’s report, is misallocation of resources.
There is also what is commonly known as petty corruption, which is bribery in connection with the implementation of existing laws, rules and regulations. Technocrats and just ordinary citizens are mostly involved in this vice.
Some people call this ‘low level’ or ‘street level’ corruption because modest sums of money are involved. Yet people experience it more or less daily.
This form of corruption takes place in people’s daily encounter with police at roadblocks, public administrators and service providers at such places as hospitals, schools, and local licensing or levying offices and other places.
‘Low level’ or ‘street level’ corruption, therefore, does not take place in posh offices, highways or central business districts of towns and cities.
As Action for Transparency (A4T) says, this form of corruption is rife at the grassroots level, yet people who are victims of this vice do not bother to report it, perhaps because they feel it is a normal way of life.
It is encouraging, therefore, to note that A4T is carrying out sensitisation activities in communities, beginning with Lusaka, educating people on the importance of reporting corrupt activities of the low-level nature and, surely, the project needs everyone’s support, especially women movements whose voice is usually louder and clearer.